Men From Skies
The whole world watched in horror, live on TV, the crowd
either ignorant of the consequences or hopelessly desperate to find space
inside or outside, running along the huge military aircraft taxiing out for
takeoff.
Few smuggled themselves into the undercarriage space that offered safety till the retracting landing gear claimed its space and spill out human remains before landing. Many clambered onto the wings and held on to each other and whatever else they could hold. Hopes seldom secure one against airstream of a plane in flight. Sooner than they thought, they gained height, only to fall from the sky. Men rained down from the skies above! Those who managed space within the aircraft escaped, at least for now.
The human tragedy that unfolded itself in Afghanistan
in the month of Aug 2021 will haunt humanity for long. The photograph of Major
General Chris Donahue, Commander U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division, walking back, consumed in the ‘night vision device green’, will
remind US lawmakers for long, of another regime change gone wrong.
Regime Change
Successful or not, Americans have either carried out or
attempted to carry out ‘regime changes’ across the world. But, the Afghan story remains unparalleled.
It all started on 7 October 2001 with a night bombing to decimate enemies of the US. It ended up as chaos on 30 August 2021. USA suffered more than 2,400 combatants and 1,800 civilian dead and more than 20,700 combatants wounded. It created 26 Lakh Afghan refugees and displaced 35 Lakhs internally. It took USA 20 years and $ 3 trillion to remove Taliban from power and reinstall Taliban!
The mighty US, turned hapless and negotiated with those, they once declared terrorists. The regime change presented the world with the Hobson’s choice of accepting or recognizing Taliban regime at the helm in Afghanistan. What an irony, those at the high table of geopolitics are already racing against each other to negotiate their terms of business with the same very people they called primitive, barbaric and fanatic. While governments the world over are trying to find reasons and excuses to reach common grounds with Taliban, they blissfully turn blind eye to something sinister, the ‘Sword of Damocles, emanating from the graveyard of empires.
What could it be ?
The Sword of Damocles
Damocles the obsequious courtier of Dionysius I, the 4th-century BC ruler of Syracuse, Sicily at least realised in time, the perils of the razor-sharp sword hanging over his head on a slender single strand of horse tail hair. We as individuals or as societies don’t realise there is one over each one of us!
What is
it that we must look out for?
Geopolitically it's a mess out there. No one knows who is in control. Anyone worth anything is trying to find ways and means to connect with those once considered pariahs. There are groups within trying to upstage each other for control of the landlocked country, forever in turmoil. Where it will lead to and when; nobody is sure.
Under conditions
of geopolitical uncertainty, countries often review bilateral relations, trade and
business. Everyone still there is either trying to hold
on to a turf, a bargaining chip or create a new one.
As far as India-Afghanistan is concerned, bilateral trade
is truly insignificant both in volume and importance. Geopolitically we seem to
have been edged out as of now and our projects worth $ 3 billion, as of today,
is a candle in the wind. However, it could become the seed, if it ever happens, for
rekindling the much talked about ‘people to people’ relationship. Irrespective of what ‘people to people’ relationship means
or ever meant, it is the very same people who chose to sideline and
ignore India.
As regards domestic politics, reassuring for the
ruling dispensation, the opposition seems to have switched on the ‘silence mode’
on the Afghanistan. There seems to be
convergence on what various political parties think about the crisis and how it
should be handled.
Unfortunately, nobody seems to notice the sword
of Damocles! It is present everywhere across the
world, in every nook and corner of our neighbourhood and they have their
origins in Afghanistan! It’s about opium and its drug derivatives.
Menace is Around the Corner
Talk of anything out of Afghanistan, one
is tempted to first consider the spread of fundamentalism and Terror. But it is
opium and its derivatives from Afghanistan that is now consuming the world. Though
news emerging out of Afghanistan tend to indicate that Taliban is cracking down
on drug trade in the country, it is believed that drugs had a significant role
in financing Taliban’s come back.
The surge in supply of Heroin the world
is witnessing is being attributed to crackdown by Taliban, forcing drug traders
to ship out huge quantities of drugs in various forms into safe havens. But it
is also common knowledge that they are in dire need of hard cash! If reports are
to be believed, Taliban could be earning sixty percent of their annual revenue
from illicit narcotics.
Whatever be the role of Taliban in drug trade or their intent to curtail it, the fact remains that there is a huge pile of drugs already out in the streets around us. More is likely to arrive. It has to be sold and it will find clients. They will create clients somehow. Some of us or our acquaintances may already be under its capitulating influence. Each gram of the substance found, captured and destroyed, represents a mountain of it already in the streets on sale.
Anyone could be prey!
Drugs and drug trafficking brings along its wake a series law and order issues. It impairs societal peace and wreaks havoc wherever it reaches. it finally kills the society itself. With such large quantities up for sale, law enforcing agencies must be up on the lookout.
Politics and ideologies apart, if we all as responsible citizens do not come together, we may end up paying a deadly price.
